Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday March 12, 2015 @05:17PM
from the in-a-name-is-money dept.

szczys writes "Arduino is a household name in hobby electronics. But now there are two companies calling themselves Arduino and as you've probably guessed this is going to play out in the courts. How can this be? One company started the Arduino movement and used the other company, a contract manufacturer, to actually make the hardware. This went on for a few years before the trademark was actually granted. Elliot Williams did some digging to help figure out how this all might shake out."

It's pretty clear from anyone in the community that Arduino(TM) should belong to Arduino LLC. Massimo Banzi is the one person most associated with the name, arduino.cc is where everyone gets the IDE from and where the brand guidelines are, and a simple whois lookup shows it was created 26 October 2005.

It's pretty clear from anyone in the community that Arduino(TM) should belong to Arduino LLC.

It should also be clear to anyone with half a brain that the first thing you do when starting a project, is nail down the IP. Registering a trademark is trivial (I own about a dozen). If you don't, you are building on a foundation of sand.

well, you might not want to focus on it right away when you're trying to keep an open, community, cloners welcome face at the beginning. being zealous about trademarks, patents and stuff at such a phase is generally bad.

thing is, once they realized it was a success and could pay for the bills, they've started being real bitches. which wouldn't be so bad if they produced nice boards with their license money, but their next gen boards just aren't very good. due is sucky.

Shield compatibility is limited with clones in general. For small numbers, that can save more money than the increase in cost. (Also the Yun is not the minimalistic clone you get on Ebay.) For larger numbers, getting the blank components is a lot cheaper.

That said, personally, I usually prefer clones that add to the features. As long as you have some clue, using the original hardware is not that much of an advantage.

If you look at the Buy Arduino Boards [arduino.cc] section of the Arduino site, all the boards are out of stock except for a couple of LilyPads. Also, the UNO Rev3 on that site lists for 20 euros. If you go to AliExpress you can find a clone for $6 with free shipping, including a USB cable, and if you want you can also get a clone for $3 (with free shipping) if you're willing to trade the FTDI USB-serial chip for a CH340G chip. From comments online the latter works fine, it just requires a different driver, and a lot

was trying to compile the firmware for my 3D printer. It turned out that the latest firmware (at the time) would not compile in latest version of the Arduino IDE. I had to hunt for a load an older version of the Arduino IDE to get it to work.

Open source is OK, but when you really have to get something done, a product that a bunch of people are paid to maintain and add to (Microsoft being the most notable exception) is usually going to work better. I always liked PIC microcontrollers and their IDE because